Case Study: Northern Futures Summit

On 6th November 2014, Centre for Cities and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minster co-hosted the Northern Futures Summit in Leeds. RTS were approached to provide the audiovisual production elements for this event.

The nature of the summit was to bring together UK city leaders, academics, senior policy experts, captains of industry, local students and teachers, who shared their ideas on how governments, business and citizens could work together to create a thriving northern economy.

The main talking points at the Northern Futures Summit were on how to deliver the right infrastructure, how to build better environments to live, work and do business, and practical ways to boost northern prosperity in the years ahead.

The brief given to RTS at the start of this project was to keep within a strict tight budget and provide innovative ways in which to engage the audience members in the pitches and keynote speeches.

RTS provided the following audiovisual services for the conference:

Full audio and visual production in the main auditorium including stage furniture, comfort monitors, speech timers, radio microphones, presentation / video playback

Audio and Video distribution and live relay of main auditorium to screens around the venue and public areas

Electronic voting system for 300 attendees with multiply choice Q&A displaying results in the main auditorium and on the web stream

Utilising existing in-house equipment to keep within budget

A Centre For Cities spokesperson said after the event, “We were running a full day event in Leeds, and it was the first time I had done anything of that scale. RTS were incredibly helpful in ensuring the day was as smooth as possible – from the exact location where people would be mic’ed up, to working very late the night before doing a dry run of the following day’s event. They were very accommodating given our tight budget, and ensured the essentials were there at a price we could afford, and the service and communication was consistent and professional.”